Customer Satisfaction and digital service go hand in hand in Beringen

Published: 16 February 2018

In the Belgium city Beringen a lot is happening in the area of infrastructure, local and employment opportunity development. But, the municipality also pushes for introspection by looking at their own organization and the way services to citizens are arranged.

In cooperation with the leader in Customer Journey Management technology and insights, Qmatic, a new concept to service their customers, was developed. This resulted in higher efficiency, improved customer satisfaction and shorter waiting times.

New interaction concept

With around 46.000 inhabitants, Beringen is the third city of the province of Belgium Limburg and one of the few cities that still shows growth. The city council’s willingness to develop is one of the biggest reasons for this. Currently, the municipality finds itself in transition as multiple services are being integrated and this triggered them to look at the way citizens are being served.

In the past, the waiting time for picking up a passport or requesting to renew your driver’s license rocked the sky. In cooperation with Qmatic, the city hall of Beringen has taken on a new approach that is much more efficient and effective. Citizens are now placed into the queue based on the service they are in the city hall for, and they always know exactly when it is their turn.

But the city takes this a step further and already started thinking about the future. In 2020 the organization transfers to a new building and that may be a good moment to start working with appointments to further improve the service to their citizens.

“We believe that Qmatic helped us to improve the citizen satisfaction but moving to digital services also helped. If you can request a document online you don’t have to travel to the city hall, this also has an impact on visitor flows at the city hall, says Jos Aerts from the city of Beringen.